Quote Originally Posted by Aussie2B View Post
I beat Exile's End on my Vita with over seven hours on the clock, but I didn't manage 100% completion. I had 85% of the items and 3 out of 7 of the hidden messages. Around the time of my last post about the game, I started talking to my husband about it, which got him interested and then he blew through the whole thing. Since he was playing on a much bigger screen, he could more easily spot breakable walls. I noticed the obvious spots in the first mine, but I didn't realize there were much subtler tells in the other areas. So I started examining walls much more carefully from that point on, but I'm not surprised I missed some. I'll check out some online maps to pick off what little I missed and try to get that 100% completion trophy. I obviously didn't get remotely close to earning the Fast Mover trophy, which requires beating the game in under three hours. I hate speedrunning trophies, so I'm just gonna say to heck with that one. I get speedrunning is part of this genre, starting with Metroid's different endings depending on how much time you take, but it's not my thing at all.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with the game. It's not amazing, but I never expected it to compete with the greats like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. I don't think it's fair to hold indie developers to the same standards as industry pros on top of their game. All the mixed reviews and criticism makes Exile's End sound a lot worse than it actually is, which is sad considering a lot of the criticism is straight up false. I guess it shows the difference between pretentious indie aficionados who want to pretend they're into retro games, even though they either haven't played old games since they were brand-new or are so young they never played them to begin with, and people like myself who still play decades-old games in the present day and have no problem playing an indie that tries to be fairly authentic to the way old games played. I found the game pretty straightforward and easy, so it's perplexing to me that so many people find the game so frustrating and confusing. The only real beefs I have with the game are the crappy way the map fills in (some rooms just never fill in completely, making it seem like you've got something left to explore when you actually don't) and that the involvement of the "legendary" Japanese industry veterans didn't amount to much. Despite having the same composer as Ninja Gaiden, the music in Exile's End doesn't stand out, in my opinion, and other than a nice piece of art when the game loads up, there's nothing about the visuals that's especially impressive either. They could've told me the game was entirely made by Western indie developers, and I would've believed it no problem.
I played through Exile's end a few years ago on PS4. I enjoyed it okay, but something about it felt kind of unfinished to me. There were a lot of areas that were pretty sparse with little to do aside from some easy platforming, and the combat felt pretty under-baked as well. I may have had my perspective tainted by playing other metroidvanias around the same time like Axiom Verge that felt a lot more robust, amd followed it a little while later with Hollow Knight.

Finally throughy kids' chess meet season. If your kids ever get into a school chess team, the meets are not parent-firendly. You can't watch them play even. You just sit in a crowded area all day trying to help your kid stay happy and focused enough (or helping the navigate Chrono Trigger on DS...).

I did in the last month play through Final Fantasy III (VI I guess) on SNES with my oldest son, and then for the first time finally played all the way through Final Fantasy V on the PS1. It was fun, and the job system was interesting, but needed a little too much grinding for what it is. Still, I liked it a lot, though it doesn't hold a candle to VI for me.